The true heirs to Anahuac: Native nobles, Creole patriots, and the natural lords of colonial Mexico

This dissertation is an intellectual history that traces the development and influence of one particular version of the story of Spain's conquest and colonization of Mexico, a version that emphasized continuity and cooperation over violence and conflict. This historical metanarrative---the idea that Hispano-Catholic Mexico was the product of a mutually beneficial and largely voluntary union between Spaniards and native peoples---arose in the sixteenth century among the hereditary native rulers of central Mexico and their Spanish sympathizers as a means of affirming the nobles' intrinsic rights as an indigenous aristocracy within the greater Spanish Empire. In petitions, civil disputes, and other interactions with Spanish authorities, indigenous leaders frequently demanded privileges with tales of virtuous ancestors who converted to Christianity and allied with the Spaniards to help win Mexico for the king of Spain. By speaking in the "power languages" of noble rights, Catholic piety, political loyalty, and historical legitimacy, the native lords and their allies challenged those who argued that Spain did not have to account for and respect the indigenous ruling structures of America.;In subsequent generations, many Mexican-born Spaniards came to identify with the historical visions of the native lords, as they too sought greater local autonomy as a "native" elite. Thus, as they investigated and wrote the history of their adopted land, they found it to their benefit to privilege the perspectives of the native lords. In this way, many of the themes emphasized by the native nobles entered into the early patriotic discourses of Mexico.